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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Uller" data-source="post: 334279" data-attributes="member: 413">I've been creating my own adventures for over 20 years now, and I like to think I have the process pretty well down pat.  In fact, I can come up with an outline for an adventure that will provide material for 2-4 game sessions in about 4-6 hours of work.   This includes maps, encounter notes, NPCs, hooks etc.I usually create site-based adventures because those are the kind I enjoy the most both as a DM and a player, but I've found the same process works for event-based adventures as well...Here's what I do:I usually start with an image of or an idea about a cool encounter, NPC, event, item or place.  From there I come up with enough detail for the location of the adventure to suit my needs (a roughed out map for a site-based adventure or notes about the setting and small maps of generic locations for an event based one).Next I think of the main encounter(s) and place them.  This will usually be from 1-3 encounters.  Hopefully at least one will be non-combat (either a puzzle, role-playing or something to encourage PCs who are not designed to be power-gamed hack 'n slashers). Then I flesh things out by populating the adventure with 2-6 minor encounters (depending on how long I want the adventure to be).  Some of these will be necessary to success or give the PCs clues or ways around the main encounters or other things that can help them.  Others will be completely unrelated to the adventure but will give the players the feeling that there is more to the world than just this adventure (think Tom Bombadil).   Still others might be red herrings or give the players hooks into unrelated adventures.  Again, hopefully some of these encounters will be non-combat (or at least offer the chance to avoid combat).For each encounter, I ask myself questions like "Why are these guys here?"  "What are they doing?"  "What are their plans for the future?" "What is their relationship to the other encounters?" etc.Now I go back through and detail everything more completely.  I make the map(s) more detailed, create a "flow chart" with more detailed ways for the PCs to get from one encounter to the next, detail the NPCs and monsters in an interesting way, add some treasure, write up interesting area descriptions, find some pictures or create hand outs etc.  At this point, I have a playable adventure.  Done.So here is an example...My players and I are trying on-line D&D.  So I recently created an adventure for our trial run that could be played out in 3-4 hours.  I started with a site: an abandoned keep.  I thought it would be cool if this involved ghouls, murder and dangerous magic.So I made a map of a small keep.  Then I decided it would be populated by ghouls and other minor undead.  Why?  How'd they get there?I decided the ghouls were the former owner of the keep and his familly.  They were murdered...by whom?  For what?  I didn't know yet...I gave the main ghoul (ghast actually) an Amulet of Charisma +4 (with some negative side effects that are yet to be determined).So I place an encounter with the ghast under the keeps tower and with two other ghouls in the upper chamber of the tower.   To flesh things out, I placed an encounter with zombies and skeletons in the main hall and some giant bees in the base of the tower (just so not every encounter is with undead).So...how did all this stuff get here?  Well...the zombies and skeletons are other servants of the keep's owners.  The ghast is a merchant and the ghouls are his wife and daughter.  Why were they murdered and turned to ghouls?  The ghast (Kinris Feldsmoor) was a merchant in life.  He recently hit it big and used the money from a recent big sale to build his home.  His customer was an evil cleric who bought a large amount of onyx and was...unhappy with the quality of the goods.  Why?  Ahh...the amulet!  Kinris had a brother and partner, Thurgis who covetted the amulet and secretly hated his brother.  So he framed his brother by providing bogus onyx to the cleric and making it look like it was his brothers fault.  So one night, the cleric showed up and murdered Kinris and his familly and turned them into undead.   The amulet was hidden so the cleric never found it, but Kinris's ghoul found it later (probably residual memories of where he hid it).Now the hook...Thurgis hires the party to "investigate" what happened to his brother and clear out any evil in the house.  Failing that, retrieve any valuables (especially the amulet) and return it to him.Detail the map and the encounters and I'm done....I ran this adventure and it worked pretty well.A word on CRs...I use the CR system pretty heavily as a guidline for balancing the encounters.  Of course, this is only a (very rough) estimate.  I still think about the capabilities of the party and such to make sure things aren't too easy or too hard.  So far, my final estimations have been pretty dead on accurate.For instance...In an upcoming adventure, I'm using bugbears.  Bugbears are CR 2 creatures...So are ogres.  Now...you can't seriously make the case that bugbears and ogres are an equal challenge to the party.  So I increased the number of bugbears by 33%-50% in order to compensate.  So instead of 8 bugbears in an EL 8 encounter(yeah right) I figure it would be more like 12.  That seems like at least a bit more of a challenge...</blockquote>

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